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Sunday, November 20, 2011

How to Sync Your iTunes Library with Google Music

Google Music is a great new service which was finally opened to the public this week after being an "Invite Only" beta. Google Music allows you to upload up to 20,000 songs from your personal library for FREE and you can also buy music from the Android Market (only 3 of the 4 major music labels are available on the Android Market/Google Music Store at this time). Google Music will then allow you to stream this music from any computer or mobile device. An official Google Music app which you can download for free for Android devices. For iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad), Google has not released an official app at this time although third party apps like gMusic ($1.99) and GoMusic for Google Music($0.99) will allow you to stream your Google Music library from Google Music which is great if you have an iPod, iPhone, or iPad that can't hold all of your music due to space limitations. Google Music even allows you to listen to your music offline so you don't need to worry about not being able to listen to your music when your on a plane, out of the country, or simply just because you don't have an internet connection. Here's a short video about Google Music:

Going in and uploading your iTunes Library can be a pain if you have to manually do each song but Google provides a utility to upload your music automatically. Today, I'm going to be showing you how to sync your iTunes library to Google Music automatically.

Please Note: If you need to enlarge any of the images in this How-To, just click on them.

1. Navigate to http://music.google.com/ and make an account if you haven't already. If you already have a Google account, just sign into it and Google Music will automatically be added to your Google Account.

2. Once your signed into Google Music, click on the Upload Music button at the top right corner of Google Music.

3. You should be brought to a page that looks like the one in the image below. Click on Download Music Manager.

4. The download will begin automatically. Once the download is complete, you'll need to run the installer. There will be instructions on the Music Manager download page on how to install Music Manager based on your Operating System after you start the download.

5. After the installation is complete, the Music Manager should launch automatically although if it does not, please open it from Start > All Programs in Windows or Finder > Applications on a Mac. When the wizard opens up, it'll welcome you to Google Music, click on Next.

6. You'll be asked to sign into your Google Account. Make sure you sign in with the same Google account you used to sign into Google Music. You'll also need to select wether you want to stay signed in and if you want to "Automatically Send Crash Reports to Google". Both are optional, if you stay signed in, it'll make everything easier for you since you won't have to sign in every time you want to sync music. For Automatically Send Crash Reports to Google, the application will automatically send crash reports to Google if the Music Manager application crashes. Once you're done on this screen, click Next.

7. The Music Manager wizard will ask you where do you keep your music selection. Since we're using iTunes in this How-To, we'll be selecting iTunes although if you are syncing with another application that is listed or a folder on your computer, you may also select that option on the list. Click Next.

8. The Music Manager wizard will scan your iTunes library.

9. The Music Manager wizard will ask you what you want to upload to Google Music. You can either select to upload your whole iTunes or certain playlists. If you only want to upload a specific set of songs to Google Music, I would recommend creating a playlist in iTunes called Google Music, putting all the music you want to upload to Google Music in that playlist and then syncing only that playlist with Google Music. Once you've selected your options, click Next.

10. The Music Manager wizard will ask you if you would like to automatically upload songs you add to iTunes in the future. This is really a personal preference. If you select no, you'll need to manually sync new music you add to iTunes in the future with Google Music. If you select yes, Music Manager will automatically upload new songs you add to iTunes for you. I personally would recommend you select Yes.

11. The wizard will let you know that Music Manager can be accessed at any time in the taskbar. On a Mac, it would be in the status bar at the top of the screen.

12. The Music Manager wizard will begin to prepare your music for upload.

That's all you have to do! After the wizard prepares your music for upload, Music Manager will begin to upload your music to Google Music automatically in the background. After the upload is complete, you'll be able to access your music at the Google Music website (http://music.google.com/), using the free Android application, or using one of the iPhone apps I mentioned above. If you have any questions regarding anything in this How To or Google Music, please feel free to leave a comment or you may email me directly. Enjoy!

Hi Mang,I believe it just uploads. I've noticed that when I make changes to my iTunes Library wether it be modify album or song information or delete content in iTunes, it does not reflect onto Google Music. If you have any more questions, please feel free to let me know. Thanks for visiting Ricky's Tech World.

Hi Ben. The music you purchase from Google Music don't sync back automatically to iTunes although you can download the MP3 files from Google Music and import the files into your iTunes library. If you have any more questions. please let me know. Thanks for visiting the site.

I'm having the same issue. This seems to be a known issue. Try and make sure that your music is already in the playlist before syncing your new music for the first time to Google Music. In order for you to do this, you'll have to disable automatic sync and sync up your music manually so you can put the music in the playlist before it syncs up. If you have any more questions, please let me know. Thanks for visiting the site!

Do you have any experience with why Google Music may stop suddenly syncing with my iTunes library? I just inserted two CDs and iTunes copied the music to the iTunes library but Google Music will not sync the newly added music. I also noticed that in the Preferences for Google Music that if I disable a number of Playlists (uncheck them) that my Google Music Player online or on my Android Smartphone never shows the change either.

I have a total of 655 songs in my library, but Google music only downloaded 546. It took a long time to even download the songs, so it was frustrating to see that it did not do the job thoroughly. Any suggestions?

Initially, I did this and all was good. Now that my iTunes playlists have changed, I want them to change in Google Music too, but they haven't. New songs have been added, but the songs I removed from the playlist in iTunes is still there. How can I get Google Music to truly sync with my iTunes?

I am new to this and have a probably stupid question but once I upload my music from itunes like it ask, it will still keep my songs in itunes won't it? Tell me exactly, please how all of this works? My daughter transfers all of her music from her itunes to her ipod. She has like almost a 1,000 songs. I was using mp3 suite as my downloader to sync with itunes but have had all kinds of problems with it and want to use something else.

I apologize for the delayed response. Unfortunately, there is no way of resolving this issue that i know of at the moment other than deleting everything from Google Music and re-configuring everything. If I find a way around this, I will definitely post an update here on the site. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Let me know if you have any further questions.

Hi. I just opened up a Google Drive account and it loaded all my music from iTunes. Now I can't find any music in my library at iTunes! Do you know what has happened, or how I can locate my music, and return it to be used in iTunes as well as Google Drive?

Your music should've never disappeared. Can you go to Start, Music, and see if your music is still in the iTunes folder? Let me know. You can also email me directly so we can troubleshoot further if needed.

The Google Play Music utility will sync new songs and playlists up to Google Play from iTunes, but unfortunately does not delete songs from Google Play automatically if you delete them from iTunes. You'll have to delete them from iTunes and Google Play separately. I know this is a real inconvenience but it's just the way the software was designed.

In regards to syncing to different iTunes library from two different computers to Google Play, it should work if you link both computers to the same Google Play account, although they would be consolidated into the same library on Google Play. I would recommend setting up a separate Google Play account exclusively for that second iTunes library so it's in its own library on Google Play. Please let me know if you have any further questions.

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